UFC Hall of Famer, Frank Trigg was a guest on this week’s Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling FLAGSHIP Interview Podcast. He spoke about MMA, working for TNA Wrestling and more. You can watch the full video below and read out highlights.
Frank Trigg on working with TNA Wrestling-
So…in my gym in El Segundo, California, called the R.A.W training center…the (wrestling) school was 2 nights in a week in our gym. We had a hybrid gym, we had a boxing ring, but it also had a spring underneath for pro wrestling.
And so John Cena, I knew him when was just the prototype back in the day. Samoa Joe was coming thru there as well…and Samoa Joe remembered that I was doing some commentating and he remembered me from the gym. When they were doing a match between Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle, they brought me in.
Then when I got there I realized I looked a lot like Kurt Angle, my head was shaved, my face was shaved…we started working this other gimmick where all of a sudden I’m Kurt’s mini-me, following him around and it became a good run.
I think there was some miscommunication between my management and the management with Dixie Carter. Something happened, I was on a PPV every month, I was doing a couple of house shows, I was working on my wrestling. I wrestled AJ Styles up in Canada and all of a sudden, I got sent home. It was like a weird thing…I had on my schedule 3 appearances that week and all of a sudden they sent me home and I never got a call back anymore. I was like this is just nuts and I didn’t understand what happened.
The way the things kinda work in pro wrestling is once you’re out, you’re out. Everybody stops responding to you, so they just stopped responding to me and I didn’t know what to do anymore…so it was just over.
In hindsight, it ended up being actually pretty good. Because if I had done that, I don’t have the size to be a Rock or to be a John Cena. I just don’t have the size, so as a result I would’ve spent all this time in pro wrestling and been small like Rey Mysterio size, 5’10 and walking around at 200 trying to sell it that it wouldn’t have been until now that these (smaller) guys are starting to get known…I still have a lot of respect…these guys are bringing it every single night for you fans at home.
So my time in TNA, I’m so, so happy that I had an opportunity then. So glad I was able to get a pro wrestling match in with AJ. It just wasn’t for me.
On being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame-
“I got a phone call, Ed Evans over there, is like hey are you gonna be in town during the, I think it’s the July 13th weekend. I forget the exact date, it was July of 2015. Are you gonna be in town this week? I was like ‘yea I’ll be in town’. He said good, we’re putting you in the Hall of Fame and you should be there.
I’m like ok cool, I’ll come in and I was kind of like nonchalant about the phone call. I hung up the phone and had to text him back, “did you say I’m in the Hall of fame?” I had to talk to him for a couple of minutes because it didn’t register with me.
At some point I would be in the Hall of Fame, and then…my relationship with the UFC, after I left the UFC, has not been a good one…I’m not one of the loved guys, they didn’t give me a job when I stopped fighting…I was a guy that kind of fucked with UFC, that didn’t really settle well with the staff, with the upper echelon, the management.
I fucked the system too much and as a result, I was like I’m never gonna part of the UFC, it’s just gonna happen for me as far as like being a speaker, as far as Hall of Fame weekends, international fight week weekends. I’m not gonna be a part of that, it’s not gonna happen…
So for me to get into the Hall of Fame was such a huge moment for me. If you hear me in my speech at the hall of fame, it was a dream I dreamed so long ago that I forgot I dreamed it…it was such a big moment…It was one of the proudest moments, honestly in my life to this point was being inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame.”
If used, please credit TMPToW and DiscussPW.com for transcribing.
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